By Alex Gordon
HAIFA, Israel —Reconquista in Spanish and Portuguese means “reconquest.” It refers to the long process of reconquest by Christians—mainly Spaniards and Portuguese—of the lands on the Iberian Peninsula occupied by Arab Muslim emirates.
On October 10, 732 AD, the Frankish leader Charles, nicknamed Martell (the Hammer), defeated the Muslim army near the French cities of Tours and Poitiers, thereby halting the invasion of Arab Muslims into Europe. In 1492, both Muslims and Jews were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula.
At the end of the 18th century, the famous English historian Edward Gibbon in his The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776-1789) wrote that if it weren’t for the victory at Poitiers, “Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”
In the middle of the twentieth century, the Reconquista began in reverse: Muslims began to return to Europe and conquer it. The new Reconquista is proceeding at a much faster pace than the old one, and so far has not been accompanied by military clashes.
Gaining independence from colonizers in the 20th century did not translate into freedom in the Muslim world, and freedom from colonizers turned out to be more difficult for them than bondage under their rule.
The countries of the Islamic world, which consider independence to be the solution to all their problems, have become more dependent on external forces than they were under the yoke of the colonizers. Having gained independence from European metropolises, former colonies with predominantly Islamic populations face a much greater problem than they had to solve under European oppression: they have to think and create, rather than fight and destroy.
But peaceful coexistence with Europeans was difficult because of their ideology of fighting “infidels” in order to spread Islam throughout the world. Unlike utopian plans to integrate Muslims into Europe through “multiculturalism,” Islamic consciousness is dominated by ‘monoculturalism’: everyone must be Muslim or pay tribute and submit to the “true believers.”
The first target of this new Reconquista was France, where Arab Muslims were stopped by Charles Martel in the 8th century. Arabs flocked to France, with which they had fought for independence, to solve their problems on French territory, which was foreign to them, on the land of their former colonizers. The Arabs, who fought against the French imperialists and drove them out of the Maghreb to France, moved there after their former colonizers and began to colonize the country themselves.
The Arabs do not blend in with the local population but seek to impose Islamic culture on the French. The Arabs did not need bombings to conquer France; a demographic explosion was enough. The Arabs did not need battles. They came with “white flags” and “surrendered” to the mercy of the French taxpayer, against whom they fought for independence at home and who is now forced to pay for their dependence on him in France.
The famous motto of the Great French Revolution, “liberty, equality, fraternity,” is being replaced by liberty, equality, and Muslim fraternity, which has no need for liberty, equality, or fraternity. The hostile isolation of Islamic immigrants, characteristic of French society, is spreading to other European countries.
On a smaller scale than in France, Muslim immigrants and their children are “conquering” other European countries. Immigrants from Islamic countries arrived in Europe as cheap labor. It turned out that these immigrants are not only a labor force, but also a force that can influence the face of society, as they demand the introduction of their customs into its spiritual infrastructure.
It turned out that this force is not cheap, but costly to taxpayers and sometimes threatening to the security of citizens of prosperous Western European countries. The import of cheap labor into Western European countries has turned into the import of costly Middle Eastern problems. The Islamic world exports radical views and methods to Europe. The refusal to assimilate in European countries leads Islamic immigrants to oppose the country that has given them refuge.
Conservatively raised, former residents of Islamic countries who are religiously inclined find it very difficult to identify with local “godless” or “unbelievers.” They seek to “correct” their new country in accordance with their norms, which dictate that they subjugate the society that has accepted them. Since many of them have the right to vote in parliamentary elections, they influence the politics of their new countries.
The “Arab Spring” of 2010-2012 led to a large wave of Muslim emigration to various European countries. The Middle East has begun to take over the Old World. European countries, which were long colonizers in Asia and Africa, are now on the path to colonization by Muslim immigrants. According to estimates by think tanks, including Pew Research and Gitnux, there are about 50 million Muslims living in Europe; France has 5.7 million (8.8% of the population), Germany has 5 million (6% of the population), and the United Kingdom has 4.5 million (6.3% of the population). However, the true number of Muslims living in Europe is significantly higher than the official statistics, as there are many illegal immigrants.
One of the signs of colonization of European countries was the powerful pro-Palestinian movement that emerged during Israel’s war with Hamas terrorists after October 7, 2023. Under the guise of fighting Israeli “colonization” and “genocide,” crowds of pro-Palestinian ‘colonizers’ of Europe, in parallel with proclaiming the destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea, we will liberate Palestine,” are seeking to drive European Jews out of European countries. The expulsion of Jews from Europe is a harbinger of the conquest of the Old World by new Muslim immigrants.
The fight against the Jews must be followed by the fight against the “infidel” European Christians who once drove the Arabs out of Europe.
Pro-Palestinian rhetoric has become a convenient mask for those who incite old antisemitism. “Freedom of speech” and “legitimate criticism of Israel” are a cover for this old antisemitism. Pro-Palestinian lies have crippled the minds of Westerners, destroyed their ability to distinguish truth from lies, and weakened their defenses against the invasion of aggressive Muslim immigrants who have come to foreign countries with their Sharia laws.
European Jews are becoming the first victims of radical Islam’s advance on Europe. They continue to leave Western Europe. American writer Andrew Klavan wrote: “I am inclined to believe that when God made the Jews the chosen people, he chose them to serve as a kind of ‘Villainy Early Detection System for everyone else.’ He added: “It’s said that the Jewish people are the miner’s canaries of the world. Miners take canaries down to mines because canaries are more susceptible to noxious fumes than humans. If the miner sees the canary is dead, he knows he has to fight the fumes or he will die, too. In some ways, that’s a role the Jews serve. When there is evil, Jews often die first. So, when Jews get killed, it’s not solely a Jewish problem anymore. When evil first attacks the Jews, it becomes humanity’s problem. Jews are the moral litmus test.”
However, Europe hardly takes into account warnings about its colonization by Muslims. Burdened by the complexes of former colonialists, it actively supports false pro-Palestinian slogans of fighting Israeli “racism,” “colonialism,” and “genocide.” The fears of Edward Gibbon from the 18th century are carried over into the 21st century.
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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, and the author of 12 books.